Letters to the editor 1991. An audit of the MJA's correspondence columns.

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate correspondence published in The Medical Journal of Australia, with particular emphasis on the level of post-publication peer review which it represented.

METHOD

An audit of all letters submitted to the Journal for publication in 1991.

RESULTS

Six hundred and forty-eight letters were received; 506 (78%) were published and 142 (22%) were not. Three hundred and twenty-nine of the published letters were written in response to material published in the Journal: 96 of these were related to other letters, 71 were replies to other letters by authors, 43 related to original articles, 42 to leading articles and 77 to other articles. Approximately 20% of all original articles published in the Journal attracted correspondence which was published. The commonest reasons for writing were concern about possible flaws in the design of a study, to add information of interest to the subject or to criticise the conclusions reached in the study.

CONCLUSIONS

Readers are perhaps not taking full advantage of the opportunity for post-publication peer review provided by correspondence columns in the MJA.